


another life breathing

by TolkienGirl



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Gen, Post-Black Panther (2018), grief and wisdom are sometimes intertwined
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 22:13:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14657280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: "Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from the ships, because they knew death was better than bondage." - Erik Killmonger





	another life breathing

“You need not mourn him, if you do not wish.” Okoye has come up beside him. Her footsteps are near silent, even without the benefit of Shuri’s innovations. “You have done more than enough to honor…what he might have been.”

“A tragedy.” T’Challa has to swallow down something hard in his throat. “A tragedy, to only have what we might have been.”

“Vengeance mistakes power for justice.” Okoye looks at the ground, though her shoulders are straight and firm. T’Challa wonders if she is thinking of W’Kabi. Imprisoned, awaiting trial.

His friend.

Her love.

“When there is something dead behind the eyes,” Okoye says, “You already know to grieve.” Her voice is the same depth and timbre as always; she is not one to whisper or shirk. A second later, she shifts her gaze to meet his. “But it lived once.”

“He could have lived here.” He once said, to a man eaten up by grief and anger, _I am done letting it consume me_. And he meant it, then, because his grief for his father still felt holy.

Forgiveness is easy when there is nothing, really, to forgive.

“He was a great man.” Saying the words feels like letting go. “But a great man is not always a good one. It is hard for a good man to be king.”

Okoye’s lips curve upwards. “We are blessed.”

“I am blessed.”

The sun is setting. They shut Erik’s eyes and covered them with fallen petals of the funeral tree, each one wide and silk-white. The people were not gathered for the burial; only the family and the elders of the tribe. But they chanted, because their king asked them to.

“Rest, my king. The world is waiting for Wakanda.” Okoye lifts a brow. “Even if the world does not know it yet.”

He answers her unspoken question. “Yes. And Wakanda is ready for the world.”

He does not know what that world is. Not wholly. Not as it is known by the people who must face the curse of exile and exploitation at every turn.

The man on the snow-covered mountainside had spent himself, and would have ended it all with a bullet.

Erik watched the air turn gold, and called that end good enough.

And as for those who live? Who live, and are free, by chance and not always by mercy?

Perhaps mercy is what they have to give.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [another life breathing [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15271575) by [blackglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackglass/pseuds/blackglass)




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